Principles

Fair

Each member of the Gephardt Approved team will make every effort to be fair to both businesses and consumers. Consumers can be confident that no business will be Gephardt Approved until we thoroughly investigate their business practices. We promise to keep records on all of our findings.

In the course of our investigation, we may find businesses that have had brushes with local, state, or federal regulators. We may also find court action involving some businesses. All that information will be weighted and evaluated for patterns of consumer abuse and unlawful activity. For example, if a business has an isolated report of a legitimate, but resolved, customer dispute; or a single corrected conflict with a government regulator, such a business may be Gephardt Approved after consideration of the company’s business practices on the whole.

Such consideration and approval will be at the sole discretion of the staff of Gephardt Approved, Inc.

Honest

The staff and management of Gephardt Approved will make all efforts to be open and honest with the businesses we investigate, and the consumers we serve.

We promise not to endorse any business where we find dishonesty, price gouging, illegal activity, bait-and-switch deception, misleading advertising, or any other form of customer abuse.

There may be instances where our investigation into a company will inadvertently fail to identify a questionable business practice. We promise that when those breeches are brought to our attention, we will follow those leads and further investigate an already Gephardt Approved business. Our additional finding may lead to the disqualification of a business. However, depending on the nature of a questionable business practice, we may allow a business to correct its error.

In every case, we promise that for the sake of promoting only honest businesses and developing trusting customers, we will make every effort to “weed out” businesses that cheat.

Thorough

We promise that every Gephardt Approved business will undergo a thorough investigative background check. For each business, we will check all relevant government records, and also examine all court records, looking for breaches of the law, licensing issues and patterns of customer abuse.

Our investigations will take different courses depending on the nature of the business. For example, if a business is connected to a professional organization, we would look at the records of that professional organization.

Sometimes, an investigation of records raises questions necessitating contact with individuals who may have additional knowledge about the businesses practices. We promise to follow up on those leads.

Complaints and breeches of the law may arise after a business is Gephardt Approved. In such cases the Gephardt Approved team will follow up, and if after investigation the reported customer abuses are sustained, we will revoke that company’s Gephardt Approved status.

Our Goal: Send Confident Customers to Good Businesses

Our mission is to thoroughly investigate all of our businesses to give consumers confidence they are dealing with a good, competitive, and fair company. In so doing, we offer businesses the opportunity to express themselves to the public as being a company that has been examined and proven to be good, competitive and fair.